The Regulatory Mix, TMI’s daily blog of regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court, issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of a TMI Regulatory Bulletin.
The Regulatory Mix will be on hiatus from December 24, 2014 through January 4, 2015 for the Holidays.
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TELECOM
Pennsylvania
The PUC issued a Notice reminding carriers that they must serve a copy of their 63.71 FCC filing on the Secretary of the Commission. The PUC Notice reads in part:
… the rules of the FCC in 47 CFR 63.71 (relating to procedures for discontinuance, reduction or impairment of service by domestic carriers), certain telecommunications utility companies operating within this Commonwealth and under the jurisdiction of the PUC are filing their Section 63.71 Applications with the FCC. At the time of filing with the FCC, each company is obligated to also serve a copy of its 63.71 Application … on the Office of the Governor and on the Commission overseeing the company’s regulated activities in each state that is affected by the filing of the 63.71 Application.
The PUC has found that although copies of the applications are being served on the Office of Governor Tom Corbett, proper service of the application is not being made on the Secretary of the Commission. Therefore, the PUC reminds all telecommunications utility companies regulated by the PUC that all submittals, pleadings, and other documents filed with the PUC must be made with the Secretary of the Commission to ensure that proper notice to the PUC of the filing has been made. The PUC will notify the FCC identifying those companies that have failed to meet this obligation.
Vermont
At the December 9th prehearing conference, the Public Service Board asked parties to address a number of issues that have been “common themes in customer complaints” about FairPoint: “billing practices; failure to show up for scheduled appointments; the inability of customer service representatives to communicate directly with field technicians, including when technicians fail to show up for scheduled appointments; non-timely scheduling of appointments (e.g., weeks after requests for service appointments); failure to provide new service in a timely manner; failure to fix outages or address poor service issues quickly (e.g., taking weeks rather than days); and disconnection of service when there has been no customer request for disconnection.” The Board also said that it would have questions regarding the outage report filed by FairPoint on December 8, 2014. The deadline for intervention in this docket is December 19, 2014. Briefs on the issue of penalties and applicable authority are due on December 24, 2014. Testimony and Discovery will run through June 1, 2015, and a Technical Hearing is scheduled to be held during the week of June 22, 2015.
